The nostalgic Ramada Inn is all about later life love; two versions of the title track boast gloriously shambolic rock and roll. She’s Always Dancing has a deceptive grace, and only the rootsy, cornball Born In Ontario disappoints.

Such has been public demand for the Led Zeppelin Celebration Day cinema screenings that the band have just authorised another batch – warning that this time really will be the last chance to see it large.

There’ll be screenings across the UK on Thursday November 8. See the official website for details.

The movie of Zeppelin’s 2007 reunion at the Ahmet Ertegun memorial show staged in London’s 02 Arena had worldwide theatrical release by Omniverse Vision on 1,500 screens in over 40 territories on October 17.

It was supposed to be a one night only sensation, but was oversubscribed.

Hence a final ‘Encore’ screening at cinemas on November 8, plus a smattering of December dates in towns where screens were unavailable.

Celebration Day will then be available in multiple video and audio formats on November 19 from Swan Song/Atlantic Records.

Saturday, 27 October 2012

Because 71-year-old Joe, who found fame in the late 1950s and early 1960s has just recorded a UKELELE version of Motorhead classic Ace Of Spades.

It appears on Brown’s new CD, The Ukelele Album, which does what it says on the tin.

With his son Pete Brown on guitar, Phil Capaldi on drums, Mike Nichols on double bass, and extra ukelele power courtesy of the International Ukelele Club of Sonning Common (no, not kidding!), he rips into the famous rock riff.

And the really, really scary thing about it (Halloween is only days away, of course)?

It’s not half bad.

Hear that sound? That’s the remaining shreds of my credibility leaping off the sixth floor balcony.Out on November 5, the album also features Brown’s inimitable (good word, covers a multitude of sins) versions of The Who’s Pinball Wizard, ELO’s Mr Blue Sky, 10cc’s I’m Not In Love and McGuinness Flint hit When I’m Dead And Gone.

Wednesday, 24 October 2012

Never been sure about Stone Sour, the part-time plaything of Slipknot frontman Corey Taylor.

And when Taylor announced that the band’s new outing, House Of Gold And Bones, would be a concept piece spread across two consecutive albums, alarm bells began ringing.

When he added that the exercise would be something “like Pink Floyd’s The Wall meets Alice in Chains’s Dirt” it was time to start digging the escape tunnel.

All of which proves just how wrong you can be.

Because Part 1, released this week, may just be the best metal album since Metallica took a shine to the colour black.

Like James Hetfield & Co did on the ‘black’ album, fed up that their thrash metal wasn’t selling by the shedload, Taylor’s moshpit marauders have dipped a sizeable toe in the mainstream.

And the result is startling. Startingly, jaw-droppingly good.

Sure, the Slipknot purists will hate it. You can already hear the sound of knives being sharpened.

Because, although the requisite riffs are here, shouty, growly and gruesome this is not.

Some of it turns out to be so radio-friendly that it’ll leap off your iPod and give you a hug.

It’s a balancing act to rival Nik Wallenda’s walk earlier this year along that tightrope across Niagara Falls.

The album opens with the double whammy of Gone Sovereign and Absolute Zero – already familiar to the faithful as singles released this year – both of which are reminiscent of Metallica at their best.

They ride precision rock riffs tooled by Josh Rand and James Root, with David Bottrill’s production bringing out buttock-clenching bass and bombshell drums. Taylor’s vocal is surprisingly melodic, even when he offers token gruff grumble.

A Rumor Of Skin is brutally efficient, sparsely simple. Then The Travelers Pt 1 offers pause to get your breath back, its acoustic strum and sweeping strings suggesting that it may well turn out a solo spot in concert.

It leads into Tired, a track made for rock radio, and one which has already come in for criticism from metalhead diehards. Okay, so it’s a bit Nickelback in places, but you can’t have everything.

The following RU486 will do much to restore tunnel vision faith. It’s a ferocious sonic shockwave, with a machine gun riff, Rachel Bolan’s burly bass and some of the most brutal drumming you’ll hear this side of a steel foundry, courtesy of Roy Mayorga.

My Name Is Allen is more by the numbers, more effective filler than anything you’ll find at B&Q, then Taciturn is a huge rock ballad, opening solo and unplugged but building to a crescendo with satisfying guitar crunch.

Influence Of A Drowsy God flirts with prog-rock before The Travelers Pt 2 beefs up its earlier namesake, and the album ends with Last Of The Real – another steroidal stomp to please the purists.

But there’s more to Taylor’s latest brainchild than that. The album comes complete with a short story, in which the plot thickens, and a four-part comicbook series with Dark Horse is planned.

Then there’s the album sleeve itself, which opens out as if it wants to be a 3D cardboard sculpture but with tabs that don’t connect. Odds are that when Part 2 arrives in 2013 it’ll all, quite literally, come together.

And it’s not just the controversial cover shot that will send temperatures soaring. Because this is the fabulous 47-year-old jazz chanteuse as you’ve never heard her before.

Forget the usual lush orchestrations, the shimmering strings, the minimalist piano ballads. Diana has stripped down for some retro rock and roll rooted in songs caught out of time.

“As a little girl, I fell in love with the songs of the 1920s,” she reveals. “Two years ago I recorded some of them in the studio by myself. But then I wasn’t sure I wanted to spend the next couple of years doing solo shows.

“I decided I’d like to try something different, sing those songs without making a nostalgia record, or a traditional jazz record. I wanted to treat them as if they were new.

“So I called T-Bone.”

That’s as in T-Bone Burnett, the maverick guitarist, songwriter and producer whose retro roster most recently included the heavenly union of unlikely bedfellows Robert Plant and Alison Krauss.

In turn, he brought guitar genius Marc Ribot to the table, pulled together a stellar band and sent Diana in directions she’d never dreamed of.

“I knew T-Bone would bring something unique to it with the artists that he chose,” says Diana.

“I’m not saying the original recordings weren’t good, but there was definitely more creative imagining involved in this than with the songs from the Great American Songbook that I’ve done.”

So There Ain’t No Sweet Man That’s Worth The Salt Of My Tears acquires sputtering electric guitar, I’m A Little Mixed Up steps to rock and stroll and the title track is informed by Ribot’s razor-sharp stainless steel licks.

Ev’ry Thing’s Made For Love is playful pastiche straight off Boardwalk Empire – you expect Nucky Thompson to join in – and We Just Couldn’t Say Goodbye will delight everyone who bought Hugh Laurie’s Let Them Talk blues roots album.

Best is Lonely Avenue on which Krall’s croon, as silky as those stockings, soothes underlying fractured feedback guitar grumble.

Diana never looked, or sounded, better. This will blow your socks off.

She's just recorded a Christmas duet with Paul McCartney, too. For more info click here.

Friday, 19 October 2012

They certainly still have what it takes – or, at least, they did five years ago when they reunited at London’s 02 Arena.

After watching Led Zeppelin: Celebration Day at a packed cinema on Wednesday, the proof is there for all to see.

If you were gutted that you couldn’t get tickets for the 2007 supershow – 20 million people entered the ballot for the chance to buy 18,000 tickets – then you’ll be doubly disappointed now.

Because Celebration Day lives up to its title. It’s a celebration not just of Led Zeppelin but of the sheer bloody joy of rock and roll.

As they serve up a setlist of iconic songs, Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones have the world once more in the palms of their hands.

There should, of course, be a king-sized hole where John Bonham used to be.

But Jason Bonham, son of the late Led Zeppelin legend, drums up a storm. He is simply sensational.

Somewhere up there, his dad will be proud as punch.

It’s not note-perfect – God forbid! – and at times it’s downright messy.

Jimmy Page is the first to admit that he hit quite a few bum notes, but adds that there were no ‘major fixes’ needed for the movie.

So what you get is a warts and all performance that surpasses every expectation.

Highlights are a majestic Kashmir, passionate In My Time Of Dying, powerhouse Rock And Roll and – yes, I know it’s unfashionable to like the damn thing these days – Stairway To Heaven. You’ll find the full setlist at the end of this blog.

I’d last seen Zeppelin at the Manchester Hardrock – long since defunct – way back in December 1972. I feared that the reunion would spoil my memories of a magical night, one of the best gigs I’d ever been to.

In the event I need not have worried. Led Zeppelin can still cut it.

They should do it more often.

But will they?

It’s long been held that Page wants to get Zeppelin flying again, but that Plant isn’t keen, preferring to tread new musical paths with first Alison Krauss and latterly with his Band Of Joy.

Jones, we believed, had fallen out with the others. Besides, he’s been playing with Them Flying Vultures, the band he formed with Queens Of The Stone Age frontman Josh Homme and Foo Fighter Dave Grohl.

But since the hype surrounding the movie began, there have been mixed messages.

Page says he is just waiting for promoter Harvey Goldsmith to ask the band to do it again.

Goldsmith famously got the band to do the Ahmet Ertegun gig back in 2007 by hand-writing letters to the Zeppelin stars,

Would Page be happy to receive another letter asking the band to reform again, he was asked last week?

“What’s he been doing for the past five years?” replied the guitarist. “Why hasn’t he written a letter already?”

It was doubtless tongue in cheek, but with Muse you can never quite be sure. They have a habit of taking themselves seriously, even if nobody else returns the favour.

So what we have is same old, same old but with more classic rock cues than usual. It’s as if Bellamy has brought his record collection to an all-night sozzled student party.

Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing. In fact, there’s plenty to enjoy on The 2nd Law, even if it is so derivative. Just don’t expect anything jaw-droppingly new.

Supremacy opens the album with a satisfying metal crunch before adding strings, pinching Zeppelin’s Kashmir riff and turning it upside down, and somehow ending up like a James Bond theme.

Big Freeze is a U2 clone complete with Coca-Cola guitar; Liquid State, on which bassist Christ Wolstenholme hollers, borrows from QOTSA; Prelude could be an ELO out-take.

But it’s Freddie Mercury who Bellamy has been listening to. Madness, Follow Me, Panic Station and Explorers all have Queen credentials, the latter two like Another One Bites The Dust and Don’t Stop Me Now.

Olympic anthem Survival remains a car crash of a song, best avoided, and the two-part 2nd Law finalé is a box of fireworks – spectacular but leaving no lasting impression.

Most interesting is Animals, which starts as politely tricksy jazz-lite and ends in what sounds like a full-blown riot.

One moment Billie Joe Armstrong was excited about a return to simplicity, embracing the joy of rock and roll.

The next the Green Day frontman was recovering in rehab for substance abuse after a meltdown onstage, hitting the headlines for all the wrong reasons.

So we’re left with Uno! – first of a trilogy released over four months, the others being Dos! and Tré! – but an entirely new context in which to listen to it. Because, you know sometimes words have two meanings.

“After the concept albums, we wanted something punchier, more power pop, somewhere between early Beatles and AC/DC,” Billie explained before his breakdown.

“My son had asked me: ‘Dad, would you ever go back to playing songs like from Kerplunk?’ Well, I love those records. I love the punk stuff I grew up on. But so many bands make the mistake of going back, old school.

“We changed the guitar sound, and the songs just kept coming. We came up with the idea of three albums, each with the face of a different member of the band on the cover. We wanted to make things more fun.”

And at a glance, more fun it is. These are short, sharp songs packaged in razor riffs, singalong hooks and bursting with Green Day gusto. You just know that each and every one carries a live gig guarantee. If you want the soundtrack to a post-punk party, you’re in the right place.

But listen more carefully and lyrics such as “it won’t be long until I detonate” now seem less a war cry, more a cry for help. Songs such as Loss Of Control, in which Billie documents all manner of depravity, seem somehow different second time around. Both Fell For You, in which he admits “I’m a mess”, and the swaggering Troublemaker take on a darker shade.

Bassist Mike Dirnt says the three albums chart a progression: “You’re getting ready and charging to the party on the first record, then getting to the party on the second record, overstaying your welcome and doing a lot of damage. On the third album you’re looking for your car keys and doing some self-reflecting.”

It’s been suggested that the trilogy secretly charts Billie’s downfall – but only he can say for sure, and he’s otherwise occupied just now.